


Polaris

by Nakimochiku



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2015-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-05 18:23:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4190223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nakimochiku/pseuds/Nakimochiku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Glenn gives Daryl the north star, to always guide him home</p>
            </blockquote>





	Polaris

Daryl burns through camp like a wildfire, strings of squirrels and woodchucks and other woodland creatures swinging from both shoulders. The entire camp watches him and his brace of rabbits with hunger. He is the returning hunter, triumphant, and they will be well fed tonight. Glenn can't even muster up the energy to get up and trade him something for meat, groaning into his hands. The aspirin ran out about two weeks ago between Amy's cramps and Dale's migraines. He thinks this is what a slow death by screw driver to the skull feels like.

Daryl drops his catch in Merle's lap and strides over, stopping just before Glenn's bent body. "Here." He grunts. Glenn glances up to see Daryl digging into his pockets. He produces a handful of crumpled leaves.

"What are these?"

"Heard y'complainin' 'bout a headache. Boil the leaves an’ drink the tea. It'll help."

Glenn blinks up at Daryl, backlit by the sun, bits of foliage caught in sun bleached hair. The light stabs into his eyes, pain searing through him, so that he’ll take any wildman remedy Daryl shoves down his throat. He holds out his hands for the leaves and Daryl places them in his cupped palms.

"Thank you." He's unexpectedly kind, unexpectedly perceptive. When Glenn thinks of wildfires, he thinks only of destruction, of black smoke and charred remains. He forgets that some plants can only grow with the help of a bushfire, he forgets sometimes that fire is rebirth. He forgets that Daryl's wild fire heart is why they are still alive.

"Drink it while it's hot." Daryl reminds gruffly, before swaggering back to his side of camp, swinging up onto his blue ford and joining Merle in skinning and gutting his catch. He keeps the skins, so that Andrea jokes he might be trying to start a new fur trade. Daryl merely tells her, "Georgia ain't where y'find good fur."

Later, when the tea has worked its magic and every step doesn't rattle his brain when it jars up his spine, Glenn goes over to trade a couple odds and ends and finds Daryl saved the best section of rabbit for him. "Tea work?" He asks, counting a collection of feathers he found while hunting.

"Yeah." Glenn says awkwardly, holding his section of rabbit. "Thanks. It was really thoughtful of you." But he’s not sure if he’s referring to the tea or the rabbit. Daryl grunts and shrugs. Glenn places a couple extra batteries by his bent thigh in offering, holds up his rabbit with a nod and goes to share with Dale.

  
  
Daryl has long given up trying to tell people to leave him alone with his injury, assurances that two fingers of jack, one down the hatch and one on the wound, and he'll be "just fuckin' peachy", fall on deaf ears. People take turns visiting him. First Carol, then Andrea. He suffers them all with soft curses and gruff thanks for whatever get well tokens they bring. Glenn brings the gift of the wild to Daryl’s sad little tent.  
  
Beth’s jewellery box is filled with bones and feathers, pine cones and dried flower petals. Glenn just had to borrow it to show Daryl, to marvel at nature’s nuances. "And what’s this one?" Glenn smooths his thumb over the sharp curve of a talon, pricking the soft pad at the end, unconcerned with the well of a ruby droplet.     
  
"Osprey." Daryl answers shortly, twirling a bolt around and around his fingers, like a baton. He makes an irritated noise in his throat at the sight of Glenn’s blood, and pulls his thumb to his mouth. Glenn feels his tongue swipe over his finger, hot and wet, before his finger pops free, and Daryl pulls back a little flushed, cheeks splotchy sunburnt red. "Gotta take care of yerself. Could get infected."  
  
To save him some embarrassment, Glenn tries to play it off, putting the talon back into the box. "I brought something else for you too. It even has pictures so you can follow along." He pulls a book from his backpack and holds it up for Daryl to inspect.  
  
"Three hundred an’ sixty five myths from around the world." Daryl reads, tracing his fingers over the embossed title. It seems to Glenn like he has dirt permanently under his nails and constantly torn, bleeding cuticles.  
  
Glenn leans back on Daryl’s claimed bit of chimney, his legs tossed over Daryl's, large book of myths borrowed from the Greenes open on his lap. He squints at the pictures, and Glenn shifts the book into his line of sight. "Wanna share?" He offers, and Daryl sits back against the wall.  
  
"Nah. Eyes ain't too good this distance." He silent a beat, and says "read it to me."  
  
"This one's called Leda and the swan."  
  
  
  


Daryl would have made a great anthropologist, or zoologist, or botanist. Daryl would have been well suited to any profession that had his fingers buried in the dirt, any profession that had him out in the wild, sun on his back, as free and untamed as the moon, stars and bowels of the earth. Glenn tells him so.  
  
He snorts in good humour, inspecting the shafts of his homemade bolts and whittling away strips. "The hell would I wanna be a scientist fer?" He asks, casts a swift look at glenn as he shrugs. "I'm happy in the forest just the way I am, don't need no degree fer it neither."  
  
"Yeah, no, that’s not what I mean." He hands Daryl his glue when he gets to the fletching. "It’s not just being in the forest, it’s--" he casts around for an example, and his eyes land on a weed, growing through a crack in the concrete. "I could pick up any plant at all, and you'd probably know its scientific name, its native american origin story, and what kind of illnesses I could use it for." Daryl nods slowly, as though he doesn't quite get Glenn's point. Glenn passes him another feather. "I could point out any type of bird, you'd know the name, any rock you'd know what geological time period it came from... You're like a walking natural history museum."  
  
Daryl scoffs, sets his complete bolt down to start a new one, inspecting the shaft and carving away flaws. "Hell kid, y’could do it too." Glenn makes a disbelieving sound. "Sure. S'called readin'." Glenn flaps his arms and gives up. He doesn't know how to explain ordinary people can't do what he does, not in their strange little world, suddenly narrowed to just a few dozen people. Ordinary people aren't masters of their fields of interest the way Daryl's mastered every domain of his. Glenn finds him amazing; he just hasn't worked out how to tell him so in so many words.         
  
  


Daryl's kingdom is green and brown, with towers made of deer bones, pillars made of boulders and birch bark and canopies made of rabbit skin. His kingdom arches in every direction that the wind blows, occasionally pushed away by a backwater town or two. But the thing about the wild, about Daryl, is that it always takes back what rightfully belongs to it. His cell holds treasures of his kingdom; raw amber with insects trapped inside, bird skulls and squirrels tails. He keeps it all as though to breathe nature in every moment he's confined by society, by concrete prison walls. He's never confined for long. He always returns to the forest.  
  
  


"I need me a huntin’ dog." Daryl comments, mouth and the tips of his fingers greasy with duck fat, hunted during the day. The family has allotted him the breast as reward, and he forgoes knife and fork to tear the meat with his fingers. "Its annoyin' trippin' in the river tryna chase dead ducks down stream. What’d’ya think? Think I can train me a wild dog?"  
  
Michonne laughs, the sound of it almost foreign for how often she's away. "You ever try to tame a wild thing?" Daryl shakes his head, and Glenn finds himself fascinated with the knowing glimmer of her dark eyes, the tug of her lips, when she fixes Daryl with a look. "You can treat a wild thing right, and it'll love you plenty, always come back to where there's food. But one day, you'll stand at the door to call it inside, and it'll look at you, look at the wild, and you'll never know which it'll pick. Wild things will always have one foot out the door."  
  
The family is quiet, mulling this over. Michone gracefully sucks the duck bone of every last bit of gristle, and Daryl licks the tips of his fingers.   
    
"Nah, my huntin’ dog would be great, train him right. He’d come right when I called." Michonne rolls her eyes at Daryl, and Glenn thinks he's entirely missed the point of Michonne's little analogy. It's not this hypothetical hunting dog  she's talking about.  
  
Later, when Glenn is standing at the door before lockdown for the night, he sees Daryl patrolling the perimeter of the fence, stabbing walkers that get too noisy. "Daryl!" He hollers, as quietly as he can. Daryl turns to him, and in the dark he can't see his expression, but he gets a sudden chill, remembering Michonne's words.   
  
For one second, Glenn doesn't think Daryl will come back inside, and his breath catches in his throat. Then Daryl is walking back towards him saying "What's got yer panties in a twist chinaman?", a tamed wild thing returning to food and good company, over the freedom of the wild. He pauses in the doorway as he passes him, the seasoned leather of his vest hot creaking and smelling of salt. He curls his fingers around the back of Glenn's neck, thumb stroking the muscle jerking in his jaw, as much affection as he will allow to pass between them while they're still in the public sphere. Glenn wonders if Daryl didn't in fact perfectly understand the wild thing metaphor, and this is his wordless promise to always return to his side.  
  
"I think you should get a hunting dog." Glenn says, closing the door and locking it, shutting out the deep purple night. "It'd suit you." Because it will be stray, untamable yet yielding, vicious and soft. It will be all the things Daryl is.  
  
"Hell kid, it ain't an accessory."

  
  
They wander backroads like nomads, going nowhere in particular, following streams to clear pools of water and deer tracks to food. They are wild, and it shows in the tangle of their hair and the narrow shifty slant of their watchful eyes.

They have seen too much, and it shows in the tense grip on the handles of their knives. The only one comfortable is Daryl, at one with nature, king of fallen leaves and skeletons. He is where he was always meant to be and it shows.

Daryl takes Glenn out for an overnight hunting trip with a promise to be back in two days. They sit on an outcropping of rock, and even though Glenn knows that they couldn't have gotten too far from everyone else, it feels like they’re the only two people left in the universe, wrapped in a velvet swathe of night.

Glenn pushes Daryl down by the shoulder, knocking his cross bow out of his hands. He can just make out the surprised glint of Daryl’s eyes in the dark before he swings his leg over Daryl’s hips to straddle him, kissing him. Daryl’s ribs fit beneath his palms, the waistband of his jeans slides down easily. He’s so much skinnier than when this all started, like a wolf pushed out of familiar territory, loping along alone in the woods.

“Why’d’ya stop?” Daryl whispers, hands sliding clumsily from Glenn’s shoulders down his back and up again, rucking up his shirt to get at skin. Glenn shakes his head, kisses Daryl’s bony hips, and crawls up to lay beside him, staring at the canopy of the stars. Daryl’s fingers tangle in the too long strands of his hair, petting him. “Y’ever out alone some place at night, follow that star there.” he makes a line with his finger, slashing the heavens. “S’the north star. S’long as y’know that y’ can always get home.”

“Why would I be out without you?”

“Yer always out without me, y’troublemaker.” They laugh softly. But Glenn innocently has no idea what he’s talking about. Daryl Dixon is a goddamn riot masquerading as a man, Glenn doesn’t even compare.

  
  
The family gathers around their last remaining van, sweltering and sticky. It is so dark, the stars look like diamonds in a navy velvet sky, bright and sparkling and beyond counting. Daryl's head is heavy where its lulled onto Glenn's shoulder. He's not sleeping, just looking for closeness that he doesn't try to find in the light of day. He's not okay, but Glenn doesn't think any of them are.  
  
Glenn's always thought of Daryl as a hurricane, dying out slowly over the ocean and then sucking in more warm wet air to spin faster and harder, to come up onto land and tear apart everything in his path. He's always thought of Daryl as some indomitable force of nature. There's no stopping him, only getting out of his way and letting him burn himself out. Usually, just when Glenn thinks Daryl has lost all his energy, he spins harder than ever. Sometimes, Glenn thinks they are caught in the eye of Daryl's eternal storm.  
  
"Can you name me some constellations again?"  Glenn whispers. Daryl shakes his head mutely. Glenn chews the inside of his cheek and wishes Maggie, Sasha, Abraham, Daryl were alright. He wishes he didn't have to worry about them. He wishes their fragile world wasn't quietly crumbling all around them. "I found something really cool a while ago." Glenn leans over to his backpack and digs into the smallest pockets. There’s a collection of rocks there, small pieces he’s come to recognize as quartz or jasper under Daryl and Michonne's tutelage. But he looks for one piece in particular, fingers closing around it. "Here. I found it when Rosita made a water filter."

Daryl tips his head up, holds the rock at arms length to inspect it. It glimmers turquoise and purple with a thick vein of white. "S'fluorite." He says, and he sounds briefly like his old self.

"Don't you think it looks like a galaxy?" Glenn chirps.

Daryl snorts with good humour. "You're a nerd."

"I'm a nerd? You're the walking natural history museum, not me." Glenn smiles. "I think it looks like a galaxy." He thinks it looks like a thousand  stars.

 ****  
  


Daryl's kingdom is waiting for him just outside the walls he paces like a caged wolf. It teases him with every breath of wind through the rustling leaves, calling him back to it. He longs for it more than anything, and itches in society's proposed skin, chafes under authority that holds him still and tells him to stay. He is a wild thing and he will never be happy in the home alone, without the option of running forever and never coming back. He must always look at the wild, look at the open door promising good food and company, and choose one or the other. Michonne was right.

"Its okay if you wanna go." Glenn mutters against Daryl's shoulder. His muscles grow stiff, and Glenn looks up to watch his still face. "I know you're not happy here--"

"M'happy with you."

"Sure, but you're not happy here. And I can't keep you here." He knows some part of Daryl, that hurricane and that wildfire, need to be out there. "Hell, I can't tell you not to go when I do the same damn thing on runs. So go."

"Y'sure?" Daryl whispers, searching his face. He looks like he's looking at a deer, appreciating a majesty he can never emulate, just before he shoots it. It’s a look of extreme respect.

"I'm sure. You just gotta come home. Follow your north star and come back."

  
  


Glenn finds the fluorite rock as he's emptying out his back pack. Quartz and jasper spill across the floor, but the fluorite is one of a kind amongst them, rough and duller but unique. Glenn searches around the house and fashions the rock into a charm.

Daryl is in Aaron and Eric's Garage. There's grease smeared on his forehead from where he's wiped the back of his hand, he's wearing coveralls, his winged vest slung over a work table.

"You look like you should be singing YMCA." Glenn comments. He leans against the work table, tracing the rough edges of Daryl's wings, once so pure white they are now grimey, visible proof of what life was like for them not too long ago.

Daryl shakes his bangs out of his eyes and looks at his clothes, then shrugs. "I got any dirtier an' Carol would make good on her threat an' hose me down." Glenn barks a laugh, and Daryl's mouth twists at the corners.

"Here."  He holds out the charm so Daryl can see, then drops it atop his vest. "I want you to take it when you're out there. It will be your north star, so you can look at it and find your way home." Back to him, back to family, back to food and good company and a baby's burbling and society, just long enough to remind himself what it's like.

Daryl seems to understand, so he nods. 

 

 ****  


Daryl has devils on his back to keep the devil from his heart. He has angel wings and a chip on his shoulder. He has a fluorite charm made of wire and a shoelace attached to the handlebar of his hodgepodge motorcycle.  
  
This bike suits him better than his old chopper, Glenn thinks, watching Daryl idle before the gates, waiting to be cut loose, waiting to be free. He imagines he can see the hard set of Daryl's shoulders easing, his breath coming deeper. He can't see that, from this distance, but as the bike roars away Glenn imagines he can hear Daryl whooping, yelling into the wind as it pushes back his hair and gunning the bike faster and faster until nothing and no one can catch him.  
  
He can run as far as he likes. The north star on his handle bar will always guide him back home.


End file.
